Tick Tock Brinngggg Brinngggg Brinngggg Brinngggg Brinngggg

April 26, 2022 7:02 PM

Recommend me an alarm app for Android. Difficulty: it needs to slowly raise the volume and I need to be able to disable the next alarm without disabling the next days alarm.

My wake up alarm is set for 4:30AM. Sometimes my alarm wakes me up and sometimes I'm awake and active before the alarm goes off. When I'm awake before 4:30 I'd like to disable the upcoming alarm for that day without disabling subsequent alarms. I'm doing it manually now but invariably I either forget to turn the alarm off or forget to turn it back on after 4:30. Which means it goes off for an extended period when I'm showering or something ticking the other residents within earshot off or it doesn't go off the next day and I'm rushed/late because I didn't get up in time.

Trying to establish some sort of pattern/habit to over come this is not working hence my quest.

posted by Mitheral to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I use AlarmPad and I think it allows you to do this. It allows you to see multiple alarms too so you might be able to work with that as well. If you have your phone screen on within I think an hour of the alarm going off it has a notification in the Taskbar that allows you to dismiss upcoming alarm. You can do that and it will still go off next day.
posted by possibilityleft at 7:19 PM on April 26, 2022

The default clock app in Android does both of those things for me. In the setting page, under "Alarms," there is a "Gradually increase volume" option -- I have mine set to "60 seconds," so it ramps up over a minute. And something like two hours before any given alarm goes off, there is a notification for that alarm -- in the notification there is a button that lets me cancel that alarm for just today without affecting any future iterations of it on later days. This is on Android 10 -- it's possible that the notification button is not present on some earlier version of Android.
posted by whatnotever at 8:03 PM on April 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I use AMdroid Smart Alarm/Alarm Clock for Heavy Sleepers which does all of those things. You can even quickly adjust the next alarm by +/- 10 minute increments from the notification menu. I also like that you can choose a music folder of mp3s to randomly choose as an alarm.
posted by roaring beast at 8:24 PM on April 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Not, what you asked for, but I'd consider a separate light-based alarm clock, or smart light bulbs.

I'd rather wake up to one of those than a phone alarm.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:46 AM on April 27, 2022

I use a combination of AMdroid app as suggested by roaring beast, together with Gentle Wakeup app for the gradual sunrise effect.
posted by McNulty at 2:47 AM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seconding that the stock alarm in Android does exactly what you're looking for. It also has a light-based option, as was recommended by sebastienbailard.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:54 AM on April 27, 2022

I use Sleep as Android. You can long-press an alarm and get an option to "skip next alarm". I also use it's "gradually increase volume" function to ramp up Spyro Gyra's Morning Dance over the course of one minute.

I will note that it has a lot of options so on the rare occasions I try to change one it can take me a while to find.
posted by Awfki at 5:31 AM on April 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I use the Samsung Clock app and I think it does everything you are looking for. I can't find a setting for getting louder, but it must be in there.

I love it because it uses the side buttons for snooze, and a swipe on the screen to turn it off. I have it set to go M-F at 6am. When I've got a Friday or Monday off and I turn it off, it asks me if it should turn it on again for the next workday. When I turn off the whole week it asks if I just want to cancel it for a week and then turn it back on the next week. Pretty smart! It has a custom notification so that you can dismiss the upcoming day's alarm ahead of time. I don't think it has a light-based option as others like.
posted by Snowishberlin at 2:46 PM on April 28, 2022

Response by poster: Seconding that the stock alarm in Android does exactly what you're looking for

The built in alarm app on my phone only allows me to skip an alarm that occurs in the next 2 hours so doesn't do what I need.

However it turns out that not only does AMDroid have both the features that I asked about it also has a must have feature I didn't know I needed: location based alarms. Which solves my actual problem of needing a certain alarm setup for 14 days in a row when I'm at work and then a different setup the next 7 days when I'm at home. Rinse, lather, repeat. It also has a subtle pre-alarm feature that is great.
posted by Mitheral at 1:56 PM on August 24, 2022